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I was thinking about this and came to conclusion that the only correct type is UK style socket because it has fuse.
In our houses, there are circuit breakers. They don't protect you or devices, they can only protect wires in the wall, those who installed the wires knew how much current they can take and installed appropriate circuit breakers.
When you plug the plug in the wall socket, the circuit breaker has no idea what you plugged in so it cannot protect it, so there has to be a fuse in the plug, like in the UK plug. Whoever chose the wires for this device choose appropriate fuse.
There is one more case possible, the wire is not permanently attached to the device but via another socket, for example C14 socket like in PC. In that case manufacturer of the PC should know what kind of currents it is capable of handling and should put fuse inside it.
Now everything is protected (at least for over-current, if you touch live and neutral with two hands, 30mA through heart is enough to kill you but that's something that cannot be avoided, not even GFCI can do it).
I disagree. The plug is usually part of an appliance connector cable, that has no idea what happens to be on the other side aswell. If you size that cable for the same current as the socket, the cable itself is protected by the circuit breaker.
The correct spot for the fuse is the appliance itself. Fuses used to be easily replaceable, often with fuse holders [1]. I have, however, never seen a computer with one.
[1] https://uk.farnell.com/productimages/large/en_US/4578676.jpg
There's simply never a reason for a user to replace a fuse in a properly designed device. If a fuse blows then it means something has gone horribly wrong and replacing the fuse won't fix it.
The exception would be a device that sends mains more-or-less directly to a user device, then a fuse would be protecting against a fault in the user device and should be replaceable. A lamp that takes a regular light bulb would be a good example of this.
Replacing the fuse alone won't fix it. But it at least gives you a chance to be able to fix whatever the underlying cause actually was.
True, but in that case the fuse only needs to be as easy to replace as whatever else you're replacing. If there's internal socketed components then the fuse only needs to be internal and socketed. If everything is soldered to a board then it's fine to have the fuse soldered too.
Many older appliances did expect the user to put some external bits in that would be across mains, or maybe across a transformer to mains, and in that case the fuse was just as replaceable as the user-provided part.
The fuse in the plug comes from a history of not wanting everything to blow up in the face of "I spilt my tea into the toaster". Very simple device, probably fine once it's dried out.
But really the value of having the fuse in the plug is that if it blows, the live wire in the cable is definitely disconnected all the way to the wall, so whatever has happened you know as best you can that it's not in a state where it could still get worse.
Most computer PSUs have a fuse inside, and it is quite easy to replace them.
I know because many moons ago I blew one, in the era when PSUs had a toggle between 120V and 230V, and I set it to 120V in a country that runs at 230V...
I think it's overrated, plenty of equipment has some kind of protection internally anyway.
My country has never had a fuse in the plug and we generally have a very safe electrical system (much stricter earthing rules than the US for example). Adding an extra fuse doesn't really seem to add much, it really doesn't seem to be any kind of significant risk.
The historical reason why is that UK homes were wired early in history for lighting with a ring circuit going throughout the house, and this was also literally set in stone so impractical to phase out for a long time.
So the regulations had to allow one 50A (for example, I don’t know the actual numbers) fuse supplying an unknown number of outlets and devices, rather than requiring one circuit per small area. Such a large fuse will happily let your radio malfunction and start on fire, so local, smaller fuses are necessary.
In other areas a 10A fuse (for example) on a circuit that only goes to one room or one appliance is enough to protect from overloading the circuit as well as most dangerous malfunctions of one device.
UK ring circuits are typically protected by 30A or 32A circuit breakers.
Per-socket circuit breakers are very much a thing here in the US. I assume they are mandatory in wet environments like bathrooms and kitchens. I think they are adequate to protect against a local leak from the live wire to the ground wire, which would likely mean that the connected device is broken or got water inside it, and may be dangerous to touch.
I suppose that a device that suddenly starts to consume far more current than normal under normal voltage is likely broken / fried inside, and it's too late to save it by blowing a fuse. The fuse just prevents a fire, but an automatic circuit breaker in a socket would likely do the same.
There is the case of overvoltage due e.g. to nearby lightning strikes. I suppose a fuse is unlikely to save your computer in such a case, it's too slow. Fast-acting power line protectors exist though, and are cheap and ubiquitous.
Only socket in my uk bathroom is the shaver socket which is an isolating transformer.
And 7kW-10kW water heater right INSIDE of your shower, right?
I was amazed that a socket couldn't be installed for the purpose of LED mirror that is a meter away from shower, but they seem to be fine at running water heater inside shower in UK.
The only per-socket "circuit breakers" that I'm familiar with in the US are GFCI outlets. They're the ones that often have a glowy light inside of them, with Test and Reset buttons on the face.
These detect an imbalance of current flow betwixt the two current-carrying conductors and shut off when that imbalance exceeds a threshold, which does reduce the risk of shocks -- particularly in wet environments. The imbalance is evidence of a leak, possibly through a person -- so their intent is to halt that situation when it happens.
But our GFCI outlets have nothing at all to do with what is usually referred to, in the US, as a circuit breaker.
Regular circuit breakers are very different. They only detect overcurrent conditions and switch off -- much a fuse does, but with a reset function. They primarily protect the wiring of the home, and they do not give a fuck if you're being shocked. (Human factors and leakage current are not part of their purvey.)
GFCIs and fuses/circuit breakers are similar in that they both break circuits, but they're different in every other way.
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Meanwhile, in UK wiring, bathrooms do not have GFCI outlets. Instead, they have a shaver socket. That's a lower-voltage socket that also has a built-in transformer.
The transformer provides galvanic isolation. Galvanic isolation means the current imbalance that a GFCI is meant to detect and shut down can't happen in the first place, so it's safer in that way than a GFCI is.
With a shaver socket: Shaver in one wet hand, other wet hand touching metal water pipe? Perfectly safe: There's no opportunity for current to flow from one hand to the other. It's isolated.
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Meanwhile: Fuses. British electrical widgets generally use fused plugs. The fuse is to protect the wiring of the device being plugged in.
Why? Because homes are sometimes wired with what is called a ring circuit. This can increase ampacity while using less wire. A ring circuit with 2.5mm wire is typically be fused at 32 amps, which is way spicier than common 2.5mm wire can safely handle, much less a device being plugged in.
But it's OK, because it runs in a ring -- each outlet has 4 current-carrying wires, and they each feed eachother within that ring. The ring (all 4 wires of it) extends all the way to the box where the fuse/MCB [maybe with an RCD], or RCBO live. (In American terms, an MCB is like out central circuit breakers. The RCBO is a combination device that detects and protects against leakage current and overcurrent conditions, like the central GFCI breakers that some homes have for some circuits.)
Rings safe as long as both legs of the ring remain contiguous and are never fucked with improperly.
For the history: The UK does use ring circuits because they had a fuck of a bad time rebuilding after WWII, and they decided that this would save them money and let it gone quicker. They were probably right about this, for them at that time.
But that means their plugs need fuses. So it be.
We don't use ring circuits in the States, because we've never had a post-electrification war here and the opportunity to broadly start over has never forced itself.
We don't usually use fused plugs, either -- our unfused pluggy-inny things are supposed to be able to trip our common 15 or 20a breakers without much drama. (Except when their design doesn't allow that. In those cases, they're supposed to have their own protection devices -- which is why Christmas lights have fused plugs in the US. Their tiny little wires can't carry enough current to trip the branch circuit's breaker in the event of a dead short. We got to choose between using bigger wires for the lights themselves, or fusing the plugs, or having houses burn down. We chose fuses. We were probably right about this, for us.)
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Two different countries, two different pathways. Both paths work well-enough, but they're not the same.
And it's fine. :)
Fuses are very imprecise devices. A 10A fuse won't really protect you from an overload of 20A. It could take an hour to blow or not blow at all. Both the 10A and 20A fuse will protect you from 1000A short circuits.
This sounded surprising and so I picked the first fuse I could find on RS and looked at its datasheet [1].
The characteristic curve shows that the 10A fuse is expected to blow after about 4s at 20A. Of course there's sample-to-sample variation and different ambient conditions etc, but how do those four seconds become "an hour to blow or not blow at all"?
Fuses can vary a lot -- even amongst examples with the same ratings, from the same box (and presumably, the same production batch).
Dave Jones of EEVBlog fame did some experiments with this several years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG11rVcMOnY
(I'm not arguing for or against any concept here; I'm just presenting some non-datasheet data.)
The fuse is there to melt before the wire.
My bedside lamp has a 1mm (or thinner) wire. If it faulted out and drew 10a the RCD won’t blow, but the wire will melt. Not immediately, but after a while.
The 3A fuse will melt long before the wire though.
I like the UK sockets because they have a switch.
UK plugs have fuses because of the use of 32 amp ring circuits.
Almost always when I'm in a country that does not have European (CEE) plugs and sockets, I feel uncomfortable. All CEE combinations have very solid touch protection. It's almost impossible to touch a metal pin of a plug when it's so close to the socket that it might have contact. When I the see the "flat" style sockets plus the full-metal pins I wonder if it's just a bad feeling or if way more people gets accidentally electrocuted with that kind of plugs/socket than with our CEE types.
Despite being fairly careless when handling them, I've managed a fair few decades without once shocking myself.
With that being said, I would be delighted with CEE, BS or almost anything other than NEMA anything.
The 120v plugs aren't the worst thing since they usually have some good gripping points, and the 50 amp plugs usually have a handle on the back, but the 30 amp plugs typically have no finger indentation at all for gripping and I feel like my fingers are going to slip over and around every time I pull one out.
I'm only a tourist when I visit places with NEMA sockets, so I'm sure I see much more worn sockets than a resident of America.
But I often find sockets that have a loose grip on heavier plugs, like a phone charger, or a NEMA-CEE adaptor.
(Half my experience is in Central and South America, where maintenance is probably worse — though in Africa old CEE or UK sockets are usually OK.)
I live in a Caribbean Dutch island, we grew up with NEMA, being a 127v/50hz distribution network.
They suck. Like you said, eventually everything starts sagging in the sockets.
Recently there's been a trend to switch to 220v based appliances here so modern homes have European plugs instead or alongside NEMA plugs.
It's safer on so many levels. NEMA being 110v means generally higher currents compared to 220v. Then the socket being absolute shit makes it so you often, thanks to gravity, get a situation where you're passing too much current through pins that aren't making enough contact. Followed by fire.
Residential grade receptacles are basically complete garbage, always buy commercial spec grade wiring devices at the bare minimum, heavy duty receptacles will last even longer.
Video illustrating the much better device you get for $1.50 more: https://youtu.be/JoL7TzGhMt0
Hospital grade receptacles have extra strong contacts which make it more difficult to remove a plug, but I wouldn’t use them in a home.
AFAIK, hospital-grade outlets differ mostly by having an isolated ground. The ground terminals and the mounting points do not share a conductive path, which is sometimes useful in some nuanced ways in hospital environments.
Spec grade tends to go the other direction with that: A lot of these are self-grounding. What that means is that there's a deliberate conductive path between the ground terminals and the mounting points. When properly fastened to a grounded metal box, it can become unnecessary to use the ground screw on the back of the outlet.
Both grip things that are plugged in about the same, in my experience. It seems likely that they share many of the same components inside.
And yeah: Cheap outlets (including "contractor grade") are junk. They take longer to install, they loosen up over time, and they do everything worse. If an house has 50 cheap outlets instead of 50 decent outlets, then someone saved $75 on materials -- but probably paid more than that in additional labor hours. They're reprehensibly stupid.
Comment was deleted :(
I have lived in the US my entire life and I have touched the live contacts of a plug exactly once. It tingles.
I agree (Except British plugs which are also fine if made properly¹).
Denmark made installing CEE (the French version) sockets legal in 2011, but the only place I've seen one is a friend's house — he's German and swapped the sockets when he bought it.
¹ Hong Kong also uses British plugs, and this seems to have led some Chinese manufacturers to make non-compliant, unsafe plugs which fit — and nowadays with Amazon, AliExpress etc selling any old rubbish they are sometimes seen in Britain.
I am mainland european, but I like better the UK plugs having a fuse and being non pluggable on unearthed sockets: it is common to plug type G appliances to type C sockets. If only they had the safety depth of the CEE instead of being at surface...
The socket holes are protected so you can’t jam thing in like European ones, and the metal isn’t exposed as the live and neutral are sheathed if the plug is half connected.
Setting aside the fuse the socket is safer than prevented European ones (which aren’t the only European sockets going)
The socket in CEE also protect the plug from being hit laterally and damaging either the socket or the plug. In Spain, before the adoption of CEE 7/3 we had europlugs without plug pocket, and I remember half the sockets of the house wiggling on the casing due to lateral hits, and plugs coming out of the socket easily. With CEE 7/3 you have to pull, they feel really sturdy, specially compared with NEMA. I don't have much experience with UK sockets, but I bet they are not as secured (not electrically but as in this-plug-isnt-going-anywhere) as the CEE 7/3.
Not a fan of the protection through a sleeve, as it encourages meddling with the socket with a screwer to use unearthed plugs.
That said, I would like Shukos with fuses, and Shuko plugs unable to plug in unearthed sockets.
The UK plug is probably not as tightly secured, but the pins are rectangular and almost twice the width of the round CEE pins. I think the result is it's pretty much equivalent.
Unearthed UK plugs simply don't exist.
US style plugs and derivatives (and Australian, Japanese, Brazilian, etc) - all invented by Hubbell - are "good enough".
Are they objectively good? No. Do they regularly fail, cause fires, or shock people? No.
Even my kids when young understood how to grip the plug without touching the metal contacts and to this day still have not been shocked. In theory can something fall and hit the pins just right to cause a short? Sure. You could also get struck by lightning. In practice it just doesn't happen very often.
For the US/North American NEMA style there are some improvements and some clever things about them. Modern receptacles have shutter doors that stop you from putting anything into the holes unless the ground pin or neutral pin unlocks it first. Many plugs also cover the rear part of the hot/neutral with plastic so if the plug is not fully inserted there is no exposed metal.
The plugs also prevent mixing voltage and amperage. The typical two vertical blades (5-15) are for 15 amp circuits. 20 amp circuits (5-20) have one horizontal + one vertical blade. The receptacle has a T shaped slot to match - that way you can plug a low-amp device into a high-amp circuit but not the reverse.
Similarly the 240v version of this plug (6-15/6-20) has the same property: 15amp and 20amp versions. The 15 amp is two horizontal blades. The 20 amp is one horizontal + 1 vertical but swapped places compared to the 120v version. I do wish more builders installed the 240v receptacles in kitchens in the US. There is no technical reason we can't have higher power kettles and whatnot. If code required these in garages and kitchens more appliances would be available for them.
(I find it insane that Brazil continues to be dual exclusive voltage; all of North America is dual concurrent voltage. Every home/office has 120v and 240v available. In Brazil it depends on what state/city you live in - some get 120v, some get 240v. Even worse they use the same standard plug design for both so you'd better hope the plug is the right color or has the right sticker. And you can't be sure you can take electrical appliances from one city to the next! At least they should have adopted different plugs for different voltages.)
The huge advantage of these plugs is compatibility. We already have them. The cost to change designs is massive. The benefit extremely small. It just isn't worth doing.
Note: The 240v NEMA plugs I am referencing are not "dryer plugs" which are physically much* larger and designed for much higher amp loads in the 30-60 range. The 6-15/6-20 are literally identical to the standard 120v plugs but with different blade orientations. They were designed to support 240v appliances in everyday use since all of North America is dual voltage. In practice 240v is only ever used for large appliances like ovens so the 6 series doesn't get much use which is a bit of a shame.
> US style plugs and derivatives (and Australian, Japanese, Brazilian, etc)
Brazil no longer uses US style plugs (though you'll still find them in older installations), it nowadays uses a much safer EU-derived style.
> I find it insane that Brazil continues to be dual exclusive voltage; all of North America is dual concurrent voltage. Every home/office has 120v and 240v available. In Brazil it depends on what state/city you live in - some get 120v, some get 240v.
This is wrong; it's very common to have for instance both 127V and 220V in the same building, sometimes even side by side in the same wall faceplate; 127V is phase to neutral, 220V is phase to phase (on the common 3-phase system). Yes, it does depend on the city, some cities use 220V exclusively, and there are a few other variations, but AFAIK the 127V/220V 3-phase combo is the most common.
> Even worse they use the same standard plug design for both so you'd better hope the plug is the right color or has the right sticker. And you can't be sure you can take electrical appliances from one city to the next! At least they should have adopted different plugs for different voltages.
Yeah, at least it's better than the confusing mix of legacy sockets we had before (which already were mixed voltage - and yeah, we already used the "120V 5-15 NEMA plug" aka "computer plug" even for 220V).
> This is wrong; it's very common to have for instance both 127V and 220V in the same building, sometimes even side by side in the same wall faceplate; 127V is phase to neutral, 220V is phase to phase (on the common 3-phase system). Yes, it does depend on the city, some cities use 220V exclusively, and there are a few other variations, but AFAIK the 127V/220V 3-phase combo is the most common.
That's good news. I'm glad my info is out of date!
> Similarly the 240v version of this plug (6-15/6-20) has the same property: 15amp and 20amp versions. The 15 amp is two horizontal blades. The 20 amp is one horizontal + 1 vertical but swapped places compared to the 120v version. I do wish more builders installed the 240v receptacles in kitchens in the US. There is no technical reason we can't have higher power kettles and whatnot. If code required these in garages and kitchens more appliances would be available for them.
If we had more 240v circuits in garages and on the outside of the house you could use electric motors for more yard tasks. Batteries and gasoline is used often in the US because our branch circuits provide about half the power of a 240v branch circuit. You can buy electric mulchers that are powerful enough to grind tree limbs but they can’t run on a 120v circuits.
How is 240v delivered in the states?
We get 3 phases to each home, phase to neutral is 127v, and that's the standard voltage, so loads are divided over the 3 phases.
230v we get through phase to phase connections. We also balance those for the 220v loads, but it's kinda risky due to the nature of our grid, being an island.
Whenever there's a fault they disconnect the zone affected but sometimes in the process we get VERY short but massive overvoltage events.
Since everybody generally uses 127v, as the system trips the 127v line voltage increases for a bit, often within spec but because we take 230v from between the phases it spikes to heights beyond spec and burns the devices.
We use a center-tap neutral except for commercial/industrial that receives three phase.
Most small-to-medium homes/businesses have two hot legs coming off each side of the transformer coil. The neutral is connected to the center of the coil and bonded to earth/ground so it becomes a 0v reference. Each hot leg to neutral is 120v. Between hot legs gives 240v. That neatly supports both voltages in a backwards-compatible way. Typically clothes dryers, hot water heaters, ovens/stoves, etc are 240v appliances. Lamps, USB chargers, and other small day-to-day stuff is 120v.
There are two failure modes that can happen but they are rare and usually only affect the customers attached to the affected transformer or a single customer.
1. Floating neutral. If the neutral becomes disconnected that causes floating voltages as the electricity backs up across the neutral and returns via the opposing hot leg. This presents as randomly fluctuating high/low voltages to 120v appliances but most 240v appliances don't use then neutral and don't care.
2. Damaged hot leg. One hot leg partially arcs to ground or is otherwise damaged. This causes half the 120v appliances to flicker/brown out. 240v appliances will see random low voltages.
Three phase is often delivered as wild leg/high leg delta so a neutral can be derived. It is usually setup so one phase (eg A/C) is center-tapped to make the neutral and two hot legs. This gives three phase power per normal and the same setup as a normal home would have: A/C forms two 120v legs wrt the center tap neutral. However you get 208v between the other phases and neutral so for high density housing you also need to balance the phases resulting in some apartments having 208v power rather than 240v. Thus most 240v appliances also support 208v here but unless you've lived in an apartment or worked on commercial/restaurant systems you'd never see that voltage.
Our breaker panels have 3-phase variants. You'd usually install both: a 240/120 panel for "normal" loads and a 3-phase panel for 3-phase and 240v split phase loads. Breaker design is the same: 3-pole takes up three slots and the bus bars alternate by 3 so every third point is on a different phase.
> The plugs also prevent mixing voltage and amperage. The typical two vertical blades (5-15) are for 15 amp circuits. 20 amp circuits (5-20) have one horizontal + one vertical blade. The receptacle has a T shaped slot to match - that way you can plug a low-amp device into a high-amp circuit but not the reverse.
Alternatively you can just run everything at 230V and then you don't need a million different plugs as any wall socket can provide up to 3.5 kW, enough for any home appliance except for the most power hungry ovens and IH stoves.
> Alternatively you can just run everything at 230V
Sure and everyone can just stop using Python 2.x tomorrow right?
Backwards compatibility is a big deal. Even moreso when it involves physical infrastructure. who wants to pay billions upon billions of dollars to make the change? How long will it take to roll trucks on all those linemen and electricians to convert/retrofit everything? Does the customer pay? The government?
And at the end of it everything is just the same as it was before. There's no huge benefit to be had for doing it.
That's why I said I wished we had more use of the 240v NEMA plugs. So we could begin supporting higher power appliances over time without some huge switchover expense.
For that matter I wish 3-phase was more available. I have a small machine shop in my garage that would greatly benefit from it.
Rewiring an entire country is a wee bit expensive. Even if the wires are rated to 300V (they usually are), transformers would have to be replaced, and they cost quite a bit. Also different sockets and circuit breakers, and a whole lot of billable hours by licensed electricians.
(But changing the voltage is easy compared to changing the mains frequency. Japan still has to live with 50Hz in one half of the country, and 60Hz in the other.)
The transformers are fine as they are. We already have 240VAC in the typical US home: Two legs of 120v, with one being 180° out of phase. That part exists and it works fine -- the big industrious parts of the infrastructure are already supplying 240v.
US 240v is a bit different than the way the rest of the world usually does it, where they have 1 leg of 240v and 1 neutral, but AFAICT that detail is not a big deal for the stuff that actually uses electricity.
The wire itself, broadly-speaking, is fine.
Suppose we decided that tomorrow at noon to begin the move to 240v.
We just refactor our breaker panels and update to some new objectively-good whiz-bang outlet format (because we would certainly never borrow existing designs from anywhere else on the planet; we in the States have a big problem with Not Invented Here when it comes to policy), and finally get rid of twist-in Edison light bulb sockets, and that part is done.
But then all kinds of stuff doesn't work anymore.
Fridges, garage door openers, microwaves, light bulbs, clock radios, natural gas furnaces, and anything else that doesn't work with 240v: That stuff is dead in the water without converting back down to 120v using an autoformer or something.
Sure, we'll eventually get things updated; when we don't count survivorship bias examples, it's plain to see that stuff just doesn't last all that long anyway (and never actually did).
But for a time: There literal mountains of stuff that just won't work without help. And that's a tough pill to swallow.
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What we could start doing is embrace our existing dual-voltage home wiring methods, and putting 240v sockets in some places where it's actually beneficial. Places like kitchens (for heating water and food), say. But broadly speaking: Nobody does this because nobody sells safety-approved residential appliances for the US domestic market, so it's a lot of money to spend to get it done for no benefit. It's a catch-22.
> The plugs also prevent mixing voltage and amperage.
There are Chinese suicide receptacles with T-slots on both sides allowing you to intermix all NEMA-5 and NEMA-6 variants.
The Australian examples are very odd - the pictures of our general purpose outlets are normal (figures 1 and 3 when you click on Australia), but most of the rest is unusual and either fairly or very rare.
For example the plug shown on the main page is very non-typical - it's a re-wireable one which you very rarely see (because it's generally only if a plug has been damaged and had to be replaced) - almost all the plugs normal people will ever use in Australia will actually be fully moulded.
Secondly it's right-angle, which is not incredibly rare but not the default - normally you'd only see that on some power-boards (what the US I think calls 'power strips') or some extension cables. Appliances usually have straight plugs, the right angle one you do see on them sometimes but not as much (maybe 5-10%).
When you click in to the Australia page, the back side of the plug is also shown as piggy-back which is also quite rare (usually only on extension cords - such as in figure 10, that one is fairly normal).
Figures 5, 6, 7 and 8 and 9 are also things you'll almost never see (it does say in the case of figure 9 that a rewirable piggy-back as shown is now disallowed by our wiring standards).
Some of the example pictures would be better to be changed to something more normal, and the detailed page could probably be broken up into typical, specialist and rare/obsolete sections because it's confusing having it all together.
It's an interesting point of view, conversely, as an Australian of some decades, they all look fairly normal to me and a subset of a greater spectrum I'm also familiar with.
Right angle plugs may well be less common (in your experience) but they're essential for, say, getting power from the wall to a breakout strip (for TV + games consoles, NAS, media box, etc. corners) when the wall plug is behind a low cabinet / cupboard.
In any case it's a museum, a catalog, intended to show a range of things that do exist, even if a good number may not encounter them frequently.
Yeah I'm not saying they are unheard of - for example I've done a lot of stuff in AV and almost every single extension cord you use in that world will be a piggy-back right angle (always moulded though because they have to be test-and-tagged so a reputable certifier won't pass them).
Just that not having any pictures of the plug that you see on 90% of cords in normal use is an odd choice.
A museum is usually a collection of uncommon and curious, historical, along with the common and modern.
(I, for instance, like the uncommon Italian design of plugs without pins.)
They used to be more common in the pre power board age (piggy backs, and screw terminal - they were very common back in the day), I can't see a date anywhere on the page. 5-8 are more specialist.
One thing nobody seems to have mentioned here is how unusual it seems to be to have a switch on sockets.
I grew up with the famous British Plug, and while people make lots of comments about the safety-centric design and the fuse in the plug few people care about the switch.
I like to be able to turn off power to the TV when I'm not using it for a few weeks, etc, and that's something I genuinely missed when I moved to Finland with the EU-sockets.
In the US it is pretty common to have some outlets wired to a wall switch.
Grateful to the human who built this and finds it interesting enough to keep at it. A valuable resource indeed, available to all of humanity! Well done!
The Danish socket is the happiest socket and I get a pang of joy every time I visit Denmark.
Ok understand - https://plugsocketmuseum.nl/Danish1.html :-)
I guess if you were to take a fork to an outlet, in Denmark you would definitely think twice.
…until you have to stab its little eyes with the pins of the plug.
Tangentially related:
There are currently 15 types of domestic electrical outlet plugs in use worldwide, each of which has been assigned a letter by the US Department of Commerce International Trade Administration (ITA), starting with A and moving through the alphabet. These letters are completely arbitrary: they don't actually mandate anything -- https://www.worldstandards.eu/electricity/plugs-and-sockets/
How Japan Made Their Outlet Safe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqClY6PDCW0
I've mostly experienced UK and Schuko/CEE plugs, and I immediately felt the Swiss plug offered the best form factor (with grounding). Now I see the Italian one looks even more compact, and reversible. Can somebody comment on these two plugs?
Is there any reason to prefer the bulky Schuko to the leaner Swiss/Italian plug style?
EDIT: meant plug, not socket
I see Italy plug is not "within depth"... Don't think I'd like it.
Swiss seems to care how you orient the plug.
Anyways, haven't used them - maybe Italy has also a socket that provides more support apart from inserted pins.
Schuko can do 16A permanent load, the Swiss can do 10A afaik
I also want ceiling sockets :( https://plugsocketmuseum.nl/LampSockets1.html
In every house I've owned, I've replace the ceil fixtures with those you see in pictures 24 and 25. They aren't special or hard to get, but everyone who notices seems surprised that it's a thing. I'm not sure why more people don't do it, especially in rental properties, so you avoid having tenants mess around with screw drivers and exposed wire.
It installed correctly they can carry around 15kg, which is enough to most lamps. When you have a wife who constantly wants lamps moved around they are really handy.
Annoyingly people surprisingly often ask me to help with their lamps, not once have I encounter them having something as sensible as a ceiling socket, that apparently only exist in my house.
The Rozetkus-1 power strip is neat.
https://plugsocketmuseum.nl/UnknownSpecimen.html https://www.artlebedev.com/rozetkus/1/
I want them to make irons that plug into the light socket again.
Why do you not have ceiling sockets? That's a very basic thing.
I grew up in the UK and had never seen such a thing, until I moved to Finland where they are damn-near universal.
I've never seen them either. They do seem very convenient.
Amazing, that's a thing I want to import.
There is not a old socket from the toilets in the old trains (maybe trains are 60 years old...more or less 1970) in Spain. This sockets are near the mirror and I think that this sockets were for old electic shavers.
Having recently bought a Dutch house built in 1989, it’s baffling to me that almost none of the outlets are earthed. You can use a schuko plug, but it will lack an earth connection and fall out easily.
Any Dutch people here able to say why that is?
Because GFIs were not mandatory on all outlets back then and what exists is automatically grandfathered in when the rules change. Maybe in your meter box there are actually GFIs on all circuits, they just never put the grounded sockets in.
Look for green marked groups or groups with test buttons. Those are the ones that are the most safe to use.
But do check behind your sockets, there is a chance you may have the ground wires already pulled in and they just saved on the sockets.
I have the opposite problem here: I have all of my outlets on GFIs and there are ground wires everywhere. But the system is sensitive enough that I can't use my 10KA spotwelder because the phase lag is such that the system thinks there is a leak when there really isn't.
Thanks! I do have a GFCI (aka RCD) at the panel but the lack of grounding is unsettling. If nothing else the Schuko outlet is a lot better at preventing plugs from falling out.
I'll pull an outlet out and have a look for an Earth wire.
Yellow/Green. Sometimes they push them back a bit so it can be hard to spot. Another way to see it is to pull the front off the distribution panel, if you see Yellow/Green from a common rail going into every one of the outgoing tubes then you know it is at least wired up properly. If you only see blue and brown wires going into the tubes except for the ones to kitchen and bathroom then they won't be there. It is possible to pull in a ground wire afterwards but it is quite a bit of work, I've done it, the annoying bit is if there is a pull box that isn't exposed and they made a junction in there, then you have to break stuff to be able to reach the box.
Technically that's illegal but I doubt there is a house in NL that doesn't have at least one or two of those.
Old homes also often have been wired to use radiator/water pipes as ground. This causes a lot of issues now that old, metal pipes are being replaced with modern plastics, which turn a stupidly-grounded socket into a potential death trap.
Also, when there's a light circuit involved, there may be a black wire. In very old wiring situations, you may also encounter red/white/green wires, with green being the live wire rather than the ground!
There are GFIs that can deal with a welder, you will have to swap it at the panel.
This website is beautiful. I wish I have skill to craft something like this.
I hope it doesn't disappear:
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Important message
Due to health issues, no updates to the Plugs and Sockets website are expected in the coming months. Email contact may also be affected. For the time being, please do not send any material that might be interesting to add to the website. Next year, I shall make a decision about the future of the collection and website. Wait and see. August 2025
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A bit of a shame that it mentions the wretched type K plugs in Denmark but leaves out the "EDB" type DK 2-5a plugs/sockets, which add a new dimension of problems to the mix!
They're mentioned on a dedicated page about uncommon Danish plugs and sockets [1].
UK one is so massive.
Best plug though.
Nah it’s massive overkill - much bigger and bulkier than it needs to be for mostly historical reasons. I’d take it over the US’s plug and socket but that's not saying much - there are plenty of better ones than either!
My man! I love these sorts of sites.
My favorite is https://pinouts.ru/
iPod 30-pin is a classic.
The Danish sockets are a happy smiley face! That's so cute
https://plugsocketmuseum.nl/DK/DK_socket_standard.jpg
This one looks a bit hungover though LOL
back to web 1.0! Nice anyway :)
Page loads that aren't measured in megabytes, no tracking cookies, and works without Javascript? Refreshing, if you ask me.
As someone who lives in an RV and has done some marine electrical, I was disappointed to see zero mention of those uses. North America uses NEMA 6-50, NEMA 14-50, NEMA L6-30 and L17-30 for RV and marine uses.
Oh but all sites need colour banners they say
This site avoids monetisation, it’s just made because the author thinks it’s cool. Therefore it’s fast, cheap, and has none of the nonsense the modern web comes with.
Crafted by Rajat
Source Code